irishboyinlondon

A few pictures from a recent trip to Camley Street Natural Park in Kings Cross! A great space in a gritty urban area that makes London a bit more liveable!

06/29/12

Dalson Eastern Curve Garden

Some pictures from a recent trip to Dalson Curve Garden! This is a really great project and space. It seemed popular with adults and kids of every demographic! They also run workshops on everything from gardening to pizza making! Well worth visiting!

The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden is now open to the public from 11am – dusk every day. The Garden has been created on the old Eastern Curve railway line which once linked Dalston Junction Station to the goods yard and the North London Line.

The architectural collective Exyzt who built last summer’s temporary Dalston Mill on the site, returned this year to construct a spacious wooden garden pavilion for events, workshops and gatherings.

Wildlife-friendly trees and shrubs, including hazel, hawthorn and birch have been planted alongside butterfly bushes, bracken and other plants that were already growing on the derelict site. The Garden also includes large raised beds for growing food, which are already filling up fast with tomatoes, peppers and scented herbs, all grown by Dalston residents.

06/29/12

The Bike Show on Resonance FM - To Copenhagen City of Cyclists

Jack Thurston of The Bike Show interviews Mikael Coville-Anderson of Copenhagenize about his blog, the growth of cycling as a way of getting around in Copenhagen and his work with other cities Well worth a listen!

Not sure I share Jack’s views on the principles being difficult to implement in London due to its narrow streets and historical development pattern…Amsterdam and Copenhagen also have many narrow streets where cars and people cycling co-exist beautifully - without sweat, fear and lycra!

A trip to the Danish capital of Copenhagen, city of stylish cyclists, where Jack Thurston meets Mikael Colville-Andersen, the force behind Cycle Chic and Copenhagenize. We talk about how a single street photograph set him on a new path of bicycle advocacy, fashion and city planning consulting. And lots and lots of blogging.

05/24/12

RUDI: Place Making 2012: Sharing innovation in urban life

Great read with some good examples!

In creating PLACEmaking, we aimed to put together a publication offering food for future thought: the creation of social cities, the use of Big Data for civic benefit, the articulation of economic and social value, and the development of tools and processes that enable everyone to participate in the design and shaping of place.

05/15/12

The High Line - New York (December 2011)

I love this place. Such a simple idea - a disused rail line turned into a park! It is now so successful that at times they have to close it due to overcrowding! An inspiring example of what communities and city halls can do together! Visit their website here.

The High Line is a public park built on an historic freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side. It is owned by the City of New York, and maintained and operated by Friends of the High Line. Founded in 1999 by community residents, Friends of the High Line fought for the High Line’s preservation and transformation at a time when the historic structure was under the threat of demolition. It is now the non-profit conservancy working with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation to make sure the High Line is maintained as an extraordinary public space for all visitors to enjoy. In addition to overseeing maintenance, operations, and public programming for the park, Friends of the High Line works to raise the essential private funds to support more than 90 percent of the park’s annual operating budget, and to advocate for the preservation and transformation of the High Line at the Rail Yards, the third and final section of the historic structure, which runs between West 30th and West 34th Streets.

The High Line is located on Manhattan’s West Side. It runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to West 34th Street, between 10th & 11th Avenues. The first section of the High Line opened on June 9, 2009. It runs from Gansevoort Street to West 20th Street. The second section, which runs between West 20th and West 30th Streets, opened June 8, 2011.

05/6/12

The Guardian - Big Picture: Copenhagen bikes, by Mikael Colville-Anderson

The guardian has published a great selection of Mikael Coville-Andersons pictures of people getting around their city (Copenhagen) on bikes. Shows how cycling in the city can and should be - easy, convenient, safe, door to door, stylish…

05/5/12

Evening Standard: Cycling in the city: can London go Dutch?

Excellent positive write up in the Standard about LCC’s Love London Go Dutch Campaign, the big ride this saturday and cycling in cities!

Spotting a man on a bike with a dog in the front basket and a child in the back trailer seems an unlikely occurrence in London. So too a chap pulling a suitcase along beside his two wheels, or a child travelling the city by standing on the back rack of her mother’s bicycle.

Of course, I saw none of these people spinning their way through our capital but in Amsterdam — a city just an hour’s easyJet flight away from London yet worlds apart when it comes to cycling.

This Saturday, the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) is holding its Big Ride — a cycle ride through central London supporting its “Love London, Go Dutch” campaign. It calls on the mayoral candidates to bring Amsterdam-style safer cycling streets to London.

Londoners are often incredulous when the idea is raised of dedicated cycle lanes along all main roads — commonly stating that our road layouts are too old and streets too narrow.

Yet Amsterdam, with many equally narrow streets, did not begin its development as a cycling city until the Seventies, before which the UK’s and the Netherlands’s cycling profile looked similar. Today, when around just three per cent of journeys in London are made by bike, that figure is 47 per cent in Amsterdam — 14 per cent more than in 1991. So I went to Amsterdam to see whether we could head in the same direction as its cyclists…

…Funding is always the biggest issue. The Amsterdam Cycling Strategy 2007-2010 committed nearly 70 million to cycling over four years.

“The past couple of years the budget has been lower, because of the economic situation and since some of the larger and expensive projects have been completed,” explains de Lange.

Money comes from several funds including an air quality plan, national subsidies for infrastructure and from individual boroughs, but the largest proportion (more than 35 million) comes from the Amsterdam Mobility Fund. De Lange explains that this pot of money, to fund public transport and cycling, is generated from car parking charges. So although parking in Amsterdam costs around 4 an hour in some places, drivers can see that their money is going to improving other forms of transportation.

The London Cycling Campaign works out that whereas in Amsterdam £20 per head is spent on cycling, in London Boris Johnson’s 13 “biking boroughs” — part of his “cycling revolution” — provides just 75p-95p per head in those areas.

But it does not expect large sums of money upfront and an immediate overhaul of London roads. Rather it sees cycling infrastructure being built into new road and junction developments over time.

“We estimate that including proper provision for cycling at Blackfriars Bridge would have added only one or two per cent to the total cost of the rail/road interchange project,” it says.

In Amsterdam, de Lange explains: “Most often new bicycle paths are made when a street has to be renovated anyway. This is about every 25 years. Then it is not a lot more expensive to make a bicycle path than to make a pavement or parking places.”

04/26/12

The Times: Motorman Clarkson praises cycling

Progress!

Jeremy Clarkson, the Top Gear presenter and one of Britain’s most outspoken motorists, has come out in praise of cycling, hailing Copenhagen’s cycling culture as “fan-bleeding-tastic” and comparing it to the streets of London where a state of “undeclared war” exists between cars and bicycles…

…“In Copenhagen, [cycling] is just a pleasant way to get about. Nobody wears a helmet. Nobody wears high-visibility clothing. You just wear what you need to be wearing at your destination.”

He adds: “The upshot is a city that works. It’s pleasing to look at. It’s astonishingly quiet. It’s safe. And no one wastes half their life looking for a parking space. I’d live there in a heartbeat.”

Conversely, Clarkson describes cycling in Britain as a “political statement”, where cyclists need to wear cameras on their helmets to document the motorists who “carve them up”.

In Copenhagen, he explains, most journeys are made by bicycle:

“Now I know that sounds like the ninth circle of hell, but that’s because you live in Britain, where cars and bikes share the road space. This cannot and does not work. It’s like putting a dog and a cat in a cage and expecting them to get along. They won’t, and as a result London is currently hosting an undeclared war. I am constantly irritated by cyclists and I’m sure they’re constantly irritated by me.

“City fathers have to choose. Cars or bicycles. And in Copenhagen they’ve gone for the bike.”

04/13/12

Spotted during a recent trip to Zurich - The bicycle: 100% urban!

04/10/12

Streets for People - Amsterdam!

Some shots of local Amsterdam street life from a selection I captured over a 15 minute period in one location!

When it comes to liveable cities, Amsterdam has it down to a fine art. What’s more, the city and it citizens, have made a conscious effort to make space for everyone - pedestrians, cyclists, cars, trams and buses.

The comprehensive network of fixed infrastructure for cycling (both in terms of provision of cycle lanes/paths on busy roads and on-street cycle parking) and public transport, coupled with reasonable speed limits on roads, are a visible commitment to creating a credible, comfortable and convenient alternative to car use.

It can be like this in every city. Declaring war on the motorist, cyclist or public transport user is unhelpful and unnecessary. Amsterdam’s approach demonstrates that a city with narrow streets and constrained by historical patterns of development (not dissimilar to London), can successfully accommodate many modes of transport. What is more important is the result that arises from the modal shift made possible by such commitment - a city that is humane, happy, economically robust, socially inclusive, accessible, equal, balanced, quieter, cleaner, safer, healthier…

04/6/12

Springwise: Bordeaux citizens design bike for city-wide rental scheme

The City asked residents to submit their ideas for a new bike design through the official City of Bordeaux je participe micro-site, with more than 300 respondents taking part. Designer Philippe Starck was then brought in to translate the numerous suggestions into a single concept. The final design, unveiled at the second Cyclab event in Bordeaux in February, is a silver and yellow bike-scooter, with a foot panel placed in front of the pedals to enable users to safely push start the machine. Peugeot has now been contracted to put the bikes into production before they become part of a city-wide rental scheme.

The aim of the project was to give citizens an input into a service they will be using themselves, with the final bike reflecting their concerns over ease-of-use and safety. Government departments elsewhere: could crowdsourcing ideas from local residents improve your services?

04/3/12

London cafes: the surprising history of London’s lost coffeehouses - Dr Matthew Green

Great article in The Telegraph today about London’s 17th and 18th Century Coffee Houses!

The Starbucks on Russell Street near Covent Garden piazza is one of London’s many, cloned coffee shops. Can you imagine walking in, sitting next to a stranger and asking for the latest news? Or slamming a recent novel down next to someone’s coffee and asking for their opinion before delivering yours? It’s not the done thing.

But 300 years ago, precisely this kind of behaviour was encouraged in thousands of coffeehouses all over London. In 1712, the Starbucks site was occupied by Button’s coffeehouse. Inside, poets, playwrights, journalists and members of the public gathered around long wooden tables drinking, thinking, writing and discussing literature into the night. Nailed to the wall, near where the Starbucks community notice board now stands, was the white marble head of a lion with wide-open jaws. The public was invited to feed it with letters, limericks and stories; the best of the lion’s digest were published in a weekly edition of Joseph Addison’s Guardian newspaper, entitled ‘the roarings of the lion’…

Early coffeehouses were not clones of each other; many had their own distinct character. The walls of Don Saltero’s Chelsea coffeehouse were adorned with exotic taxidermy, a talking point for local gentlemen scientists; at Lunt’s in Clerkenwell Green, patrons could sip coffee, have a haircut and enjoy a fiery lecture on the abolition of slavery given by its barber-proprietor; at Moll King’s, a near neighbour of Button’s in Covent Garden, libertines could sober up after a long night of drinking and browse a directory of prostitutes, before being led to the requisite brothel on nearby Bow Street. There was even a floating coffeehouse, the Folly of the Thames, moored outside Somerset House, where jittery dancers performed waltzes and jigs late into the night…

Despite these diversifications, coffeehouses all followed the same formula, maximising the interaction between customers and forging a creative, convivial environment. On entering, patrons would be engulfed in smoke, steam, and sweat and assailed by cries of “What news have you?” or, more formally, “Your servant, sir, what news from Tripoli?” …

Coffeehouses brought people and ideas together; they inspired brilliant ideas and discoveries that would make Britain the envy of the world. The first stocks and shares were traded in Jonathan’s coffeehouse by the Royal Exchange (now a private members’ club); merchants, ship-captains, cartographers, and stockbrokers coalesced into Britain’s insurance industry at Lloyd’s on Lombard Street (now a Sainsbury’s); and the coffeehouses surrounding the Royal Society galvanized scientific breakthroughs. Isaac Newton once dissected a dolphin on the table of the Grecian Coffeehouse…

03/20/12

Amsterdam - Bicycles and a night economy!

Photo: Thomas Schlijper

03/11/12

Good, Better, Best – The City of Copenhagen’s Bicycle Strategy 2011-2025 - some nice weekend reading!

A bicycle-friendly city is a city with more space, less noise, cleaner air, healthier citizens and a better economy. It’s a city that is a nicer place to be in and where individuals have a higher quality of life. Where accessibility is high and there is a short route from thought to action if one wants to head out into nature, participate in cultural or sports activities or buy locally. Bicycle traffic is therefore not a singular goal but rather an effective tool to use when creating a liveable city with space for diversity and development.

Fortunately, it pays off to invest in urban cycling. Increased cycling levels give society less congestion, fewer sick days, longer life expectancy, less wear and tear on the roads and less pollution. Cycling initiatives are also inexpensive compared with other transport investments.

03/9/12

AmsterdamizeTV - Broadcasting good city living 24/7!

Talk about capturing good city living! His blog is also great…particularly this post! Moaners take note, cycling in cities isn’t about sport, lycra, helmets, cyclists running red lights, riding on pavements, “road tax” arguments….its about sharing road space fairly, conscientiousness, having infrastructure where required and above all, a good quality city environment for everyone!

02/15/12

irishboyinlondon

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